


The Perversion

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A twisted version of a soul bond, Asphyxiation, Bathtubs, Drowning, Hallucinations, Horcruxes, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Blood, Tentacles, Unhealthy Relationships, kind of, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:15:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22219165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Harry couldn't help what was already inside him.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 3
Kudos: 106





	The Perversion

**Author's Note:**

> I watched both the Videodrome and Annihilation again tonight, so that's my excuse for whatever incomprehensible thing this turned out to be.

Harry lay in the bath staring up at the ceiling. It was long past curfew and he shouldn’t be in here, but who was going to stop him now? It was late enough that the castle was finally starting to sleep, and the creaking of the walls and the scraping of the stairs had, at last, quietened to an almost unnerving silence. 

He shifted a little and the water rolled in a wave from one end to the other, the gentle wash against the side the only noise in the entire room. 

It had been too loud in his room, and too hot. The shifting and breathing of everyone else got under his skin and made him squirm, and the heat was cloying. It stuck to his skin like napalm, blistering and burning at his bones, turning everything inside him to this sticky ash that he could taste on the back of his throat. 

And when he felt like that, Harry didn’t feel like himself anymore, rather it was as though another person had stolen away his skin and now, he was wearing a substitute a size too small. Sometimes, like tonight, when the heat went to his head and the noise grated against every nerve, he felt a scratching under his skin, sometimes he even saw it, a pressing from the inside as though something was trying to get out.

Harry shook his head, twisting his neck awkwardly in the process, and stared at a space across the room; he preferred not to think about what was inside him. That slippery _thing_ that was becoming increasingly sentient and increasingly irrepressible; it crept over him or, rather, rose up from the depths and _ached_ to be let out.

It was aching now. 

Not just on the surface but also in the very threads that made up his muscles; it lurked in his skin and right down into the marrow of his bones. It was _everywhere_. A chronic, pervasive disease that came and went like water waves, driven by shifts the size of tsunamis; and it was _always_ so much worse when a certain person smiled at him, and no matter how much he tried to ignore it, he always failed. 

Apparently, his madness had a favourite. 

And the more he tried to ignore him, the more he seemed to bleed into his thoughts, and the more that that happened, the more it _ached_. Tom Riddle was simply unignorable. Just being near to him was enough to have his image ooze further between the folds of Harry’s brain, until his every thought was revolving around the man.

Harry sunk himself deeper under the water. 

He’d tried to understand this; as much as he’d hated it, he’d researched every single blood curse he could find, every disease and every disorder and every syndrome that was known, and none of them sounded anything like what was wrong with him. All he did know was that after he watched Tom; after he was near him; after he’d felt the warmth of his skin and seen the smiles that were reserved only for him, he got this feeling of wrongness in his own skin and the need to clean it. 

To get whatever it was out of him

Hence, he was lying here, on his back, still in his clothes, in cold water staring at the ceiling because he’d been _very_ close to Tom today. So close that he could still feel Tom’s handprints on his back and the shadows of kisses on his mouth from where Tom had taken what he wanted. And all he’d left behind was a burning memory, and an aching, and an exhaustion that left Harry seeing things writhing in the blackness above him. There was so much darkness up there. Complete and full, it dripped down the walls, spilling its viscous shadows like treacle over the stone. But that darkness was safe in a way; secure, a secret void to whom he could show the more twisted sides of his soul and the thing that crawled under his skin. Those were the things he couldn’t show anyone else, well…

Almost anyone else. 

Tom had seen them once when he wasn’t supposed to be there, and he’d had a _strange_ reaction to those warped secrets that made moral redemption an impossibility. He hadn’t been scared, rather, he’d been intrigued, fascinated almost, by the wildness in Harry’s eyes, and the smile that looked like someone else’s and that brutality that was ripping him apart from the inside out. 

That had been the first time.

And by no means that last that Tom had coaxed whatever it was inside him to the surface; fed it, watered it, and indulged it. Now it kept coming back for more like a stray dog that someone had given sympathy. 

Whatever was inside him liked Tom.

It _wanted_ Tom. 

The black was leaking now, down the walls, leaching through them until all the walls were encased in that same oily black. The long glossy lines streaked down the walls and along the floor. Harry could feel it approaching, how it edged forward slick by slick, dribbling along the grout of the tiles and up the side of the bathtub itself. Harry swallowed and shut his eyes as the darkness spilled onto his shoulders and a heavy weight pushed him down under the water. 

Below the surface, everything was different. The sounds were louder, echoey and every slight movement translated into a great wall of noise that reverberated all over his brain. Harry swallowed again, that burning which had brought him here in the first place was still scorching the lining of his stomach and making him sick and dizzy. He could still feel it writhing under his skin, pushing outward with what felt like fingers, as though there was someone underneath scratching to get out. 

But the darkness held him there. Despite the water, Harry opened his eyes a crack and watched a tall figure bearing down on him with its fingers gripping his collarbones, nails digging into his skin. Motionless it stood over him, its mouth shining and its eyes glowing crimson even through the murky haze of the water.

If Harry could trust his sight, he would have said that the figure smiled.

But he couldn’t.

Not when the darkness was spreading as it always did, like a contagion it wrapped itself around his legs, curling up along his skin and licking every inch. If Harry opened his eyes, then he could see it in the blur; the colour was clear even if the water did sting his eyes. And there was no mistaking how it wound itself around him part by part; how it started at his shoulders, leaching out from the fingers of the figure that held him down. 

How the thick threads of black curled over his skin, dragging open each piece of his clothes and letting them float away, before spiralling down his legs and pulling apart his thighs and swallowing him down until Harry was gripping hard onto the side of the bathtub; his fingers dyed blacker than the void and shaking uncontrollably.

And if felt so _good_.

Good enough that Harry wanted to push back against it, to squirm and writhe at this feeling until the water slopped over the edge of the tub and the aching would stop. But he was still being pressed hard against the bottom of the bathtub, his spine forced to bend at an awkward angle, and just when he thought he couldn’t possibly be pushed any deeper, he was. 

This weight settled on him. A blackness that was hazy at the edges, but so solid and so tangible against his skin; holding him in place beneath the water until his lungs were screaming hoarsely for air, that sweet oxygen that he was being denied for no reason than it amused the darkness that was crushing his bones.

Harry tried to focus.

But between the incessant touching of those dark tendrils against his bare skin, and the impossible weight forcing him down, he couldn’t focus on anything, not even the soft sibilating of the figure above him.

He knocked his head back against the floor of the tub and struggled as the ache intensified; scratching and burning and forcing its way to the surface. Despite the darkness coating his skin like a glaze, Harry could still see how it moved by itself; bubbled and shifted in a way that skin shouldn’t.

It was wrong. 

Perversely _wrong_. 

But he couldn’t stop it anymore. He was too far gone, and Harry could only watch in suffocating repulsion as that dark, wet, painful thing inside him began to crawl out. Splitting open his chest as it did so, he could hear the cracking of his ribs resound again and again in the water, merging with awful sound ripping skin. Then came the blood. Thick and crimson it clouded the water until there was nothing visible but a great wall of red that invaded every corner of the bathtub. The water was stained, and Harry could taste it, that metallic taste of himself, all over his tongue. 

And still, he was held down.

Those serpentine fingers spread wider and squeezed harder, tightening their grip on his throat until the even the red behind his eyes began to fade into this same, ever-expanding horizon of blackness, and he felt, for just a moment, relaxed, his body going limp and the ache retreating. 

Only then did the weight lift off him and hands, real human hands, pulled at his shoulders, dragging him upward from the murky world of black and red. It was a relief to break through the film spread across the water’s surface, to have an abundance of colours throbbing behind his eyes, and to gasp and cough and choke on the abundance of oxygen in the air until the room was spinning and his throat felt raw like it had been scraped out with a fork.

And Tom was there.

Standing beside him with wet clothes and red glitter in his eyes. 

“Oh, Harry,” he said in a tone that made his skin prickle; he leant down until their faces were aligned, and Harry could see the shadows streaked down Tom’s face. “Oh, Harry,” he said again, “there’s something really wrong with you.” 

Harry swallowed; his tongue felt numb, everything felt numb; it always did when Tom had been here. But he didn’t look at him, instead, Harry looked at his chest, it was still whole, not a scratch or blemish on it, and his skin was motionless like skin should be, and the water was still clear, and there was no black to be seen.

Which meant Tom was right again.

“I know,” he heard himself mumbling, just watching his shaking hands as they gripped awkwardly onto the side of the tub, so close to Tom. 

Tom just smiled, “and I _love_ it,” he said, his hand coming to rest against Harry’s cheek, they were cold, like the water, but that didn’t stop his thumb brushing over Harry’s lips, and his eyes just buzzing with colours that too were perversely _wrong_. 

“I know, Tom.”

**Author's Note:**

> I profoundly apologise for what an incoherent mess this was.


End file.
